Book: Farewell to Old England Forever

My main objective in writing Farewell to Old England Forever was to explain, describe and evoke wonder about those people who chose to leave family and friends forever and sail half way around the world in a small vessel in order to emigrate to a remote place they had little knowledge about.

In order to tell this story I wanted the reader to know what it was like in the colonies, how the home and colonial governments felt about emigration/immigration, what was involved in emigrating, the reasons why people emigrated, who were the people who decided to emigrate, what the emigrant vessels were like, what the emigrants experienced on this long sea passage and the experience on arrival.

Researched and written over a period of some eight years the book draws on a large number of original and old documents, manuscripts, monographs, letters, journals, diaries, ships logs and newspaper articles and a considerable amount of old and contemporary published material.

The book is divided into 8 chapters:

• Early Arrivals

• The Emigration Debate

• Deciding to Emigrate

• Those Who Came

• The Emigrant Vessels and Their Crew

• Preparation and Embarkation

• Passage to the Colonies

• Arriving.

There are over 40 illustrations in the book including some wonderful illustrations of ships such as the one of the ship Lightening reproduced below from a painting by D.M. Little.